Bradley Reynolds

CEO, Mongoose Metrics LLC

Stephen Abbey admits it was a “scary thing” to make a 19-year-old his chief technology officer.

Bradley Reynolds, however, was the man for the job, said Mr. Abbey, who in the late 1990s owned Cleveland-based Internet Access Group.

Not only did the kid know the technology, he had the intelligence and the intangibles to lead a group of more than 30 people who provided Internet service to some huge clients, such as Ohio State University.

“He had the "can do' and the ability to get things done,” Mr. Abbey said.

Now Mr. Reynolds, 31, is CEO of Mongoose Metrics LLC, which helps businesses collect information about people who call them. Founded in 2007 by Mr. Reynolds and Jeff Tirey, the Independence-based company already has about 20 employees, and it's profitable. Mr. Reynolds said sales should hit $2.5 million this year and keep growing next year.

The rest of his résumé is pretty impressive, too. After Mr. Abbey sold Internet Access Group for more than $15 million in 1998 — a deal that gave Mr. Reynolds a nice payday — the 1996 Mentor High School graduate worked for information technology companies in Denmark, Boston and Silicon Valley, where he did a stint helping Apple Inc. build the foundation for what would become iTunes and other online services.

In 2001, however, he and Mr. Abbey got back together to form Expedient Holdings LLC. They sold the Internet access provider in 2005 for about $30 million to a Pittsburgh firm, which still owns an Expedient data center in Garfield Heights.

Mr. Reynolds, who attended Case Western Reserve University, is just as active in his personal life. He enjoys golf, biking, skiing and is even training to go mountain climbing. He still likes technology, too, noting that he's reading “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” on his Kindle.

He picked up his technical expertise on his own, starting by learning to program video games on his Tandy computer after his parents refused to buy him a Nintendo.